Evolution, transitions, and volvocine algae

Volvox, the Fierce Roller, is a model organism for the evolution of multicellularity and cellular differentiation.
I am a biologist who studies the evolution of biological complexity using Volvox and related algae as a study system. I blog about evolutionary biology, astrobiology, philosophy of biology, skepticism, academia and academic publishing, intelligent design and other forms of creationism, and whatever else happens to be on my mind.Read More…

I’m really not sure what the logic is here. The blog post quotes extensively from the Quanta article (really the post just is quotes from the article, with two short comments added), including sections that make clear that Dr. Kacar observed evolution in action in these experiments:

…Kacar has engineered that ancient protein into modern E. coli and tracked how the microbe adapted to it…Within a couple of months — about 500 generations — the hybrid E. coli were growing as well as their modern counterparts. These survivor strains must have evolved ways to overcome the problems caused by the outdated protein.

The post concludes, “Maybe they never got the memo that after 700 million years, they were just supposed to some how fail?” A strange thing to say after quoting,

The hybrid E. coli clearly suffered from the archaic component. The hybrids grew much more slowly than their normal counterparts, producing 25 percent fewer offspring.

So first of all, whose memo are we talking about? I’m aware of nothing in evolutionary theory that requires that the modern bacteria with the ancient gene are ‘supposed’ to fail . Second, they kind of did fail, suffering a clear decrease in fitness, which the author of the blog post obviously knew. Somehow, in the Bizarro World of intelligent design, an experiment that demonstrates evolution is evidence against evolution.